Pair Of Tourists Sue Austin Police For Alleged Excessive Force [UPDATE]

AUSTIN, TX -- A pair of tourists roughed up by downtown police last year formally sued the city for excessive force on Monday.

Jeremy King, 22, and Lourdes Glen, 24, were visiting Austin on Nov. 6 last year while on vacation when they were confronted by police for allegedly jaywalking. One of their friends recorded the encounter on a cell phone, and it quickly went viral.

The video shows police officers forcefully throwing King and a friend to the ground, hitting them repeatedly in an effort to arrest them. On the video, King is heard repeatedly asking why he was being arrested.

“They were very roughly arrested,” said their attorney Brian McGiverin. “These events fall into a larger practice we’re seeing with the Austin Police Department. It’s outrageous, it’s illegal and it’s unconstitutional.”

The lawsuit comes days after another officer-involved shooting during which an unarmed black suspect was shot dead. Like King, the deceased from the recent shooting also was African American.

“This is America,” the lawyer said. “We have rights. You cannot be tackled on the street for jaywalking. We expect to hold the offices accountable.”

For their part, Glen and King both said they had to seek medical treatment after the incident -- King for pain, a strained wrist and a bump on the head and Glen for a rapid heart rate that she said was twice the normal rate..

Glen said she was arrested after she questioned the officers’ actions on the scene, an assertion McGiverin echoed. King’s jaywalking charge was subsequently dismissed by a prosecutor, the attorney added.

“I felt powerless and weak, and that’s not my normal nature,” King said in re-living the incident for reporters. “I think it was very unnecessary,” he said of the police officers’ actions.

King said he still bore the psychological scars from that night, and is seeing a therapist once a week for treatment.

McGiverin said the case has racial undertones to it, given that there were other jaywalkers -- Caucasian ones -- in the same group of pedestrians who were not approached by police, including friends of the plaintiffs.

At King’s side at the press conference announcing the filing of the federal civil rights lawsuit were King’s mother and grandmother, Nevetta King and Edwina Lewis King, respectively.

“I was angry,” King’s mother said. “I was sad because of the treatment he received. It was hard to watch,” she said of the video.

His grandmother said she believes race played a factor in her grandson’s arrest. Having grown up in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era, she said she knew what racism looks like.

“I grew up in Alabama,” she said. “I know discrimination well; I lived it. I never would have imagined my grandchild going through that.”

Toward the end of the press conference announcing the lawsuit, both women became emotional after talking about where their loved one endured.

McGiverin said he wasn’t pursuing the case for profit motive, but to help change a perceived pattern of police abuse in Austin. To buttress the point, he noted he was representing both of the plaintiffs pro bono.

“I didn’t take this case to make money,” he said. “I do think this case has racial undertones, and it’s illustrated more starkly here.”

Video of the encounter can be seen below. Warning: The footage contains strong images and profanity.

>>> Photos: Jeremy King speaks to reporters with his attorney, Brian McGiverin, and fellow plaintiff, Lourdes Glen, to his left; with his mother and grandmother to his right. -- By Tony Cantu

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From Feb. 14:

AUSTIN, TX -- A federal lawsuit alleging use of excessive force against several Austin Police Department officers will be filed on Monday, an attorney filing the litigation confirmed to Patch.

The plaintiffs in the case are tourists who were visiting Austin’s Sixth Street -- a popular, bar-lined corridor particularly popular with a younger set.

A witness to the incident, which occurred last year, captured footage of the incident in a video that went viral. In the cell-phone recorded video, three police are seen throwing a man to the ground in trying to arrest him for jaywalking.

• The video of the incident can be seen here. Warning: the video contains strong imagery and is laced with profanity.

Officers are seen punching one of the men repeatedly in an effort to handcuff him as they arrest them for crossing against the light, as one of the officers is heard saying in answer to a woman’s question..

The lawsuit comes on the heels of the death of an unarmed 17-year-old African American boy fatally shot twice while wearing no clothes. That officer-involved shooting in North Austin has galvanized social justice advocates in calling for justice.

Austin has had a long history of complaints against officers for use of excessive force dating several years. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened with a list of 164 possible measures for the APD to implement to avoid such occurrences.

The APD subsequently said they had adopted several of those measures.

Recently, the city settled a civil lawsuit stemming from the death of an African American man killed by a police officer after a call to police alerting the suspect had tried withdrawing funds from an account without authorization.

In that case, the suspect was killed in the back of the neck during an ensuing struggle with the police officer. The city has awarded nearly $2 million to the family of the slain man in settling resulting civil lawsuits.

Attorneys are scheduled to release more details about the excessive force lawsuit involving tourists at a Feb. 15 press conference staged at 1221 Hancock Dr.